by Maurene Goo
“I think they might win,” Liz said with excitement.
“Shh! Don’t jinx it!” My superstitious Korean side always came out in moments like this. I knocked on the tiny portion of wood on my seat’s armrest for good measure.
Mikemaster Ariza lined three trophies up on a table and announced the third-place winner — the five Pussycat Dolls. Yep. All the guys in the audience cheered raucously, and Liz and I shot disgusted looks at the ones sitting around us.
After clearing his throat, Mikemaster Ariza announced, “And the second-place winner for this year’s Battle of the Bands is …” A silly drumroll came from somewhere backstage and the crowd tittered nervously.
“MIDNIGHT DAWN!”
There was an audible gasp from the audience, and Liz and I looked at each other, eyeballs bulging. Holy crap!
Midnight Dawn came back onstage, looking pretty stunned in their stupid outfits. The one in the bow tie looked particularly crestfallen.
Okay, so this didn’t mean that the Raw Meat Demons won…. But who else would, right? Liz and I clasped hands and jumped up and down like little girls.
“Now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Please give a round of applause for this year’s Battle of the Bands champions …”
My heart stopped beating.
“THE RAW MEAT DEMONS!”
Carrie, David, Karen, and Oliver ran out onstage to get their trophy and started hugging each other and jumping up and down. I ran to take a picture of them, and they all lined up with the trophy held between them — sweaty and happy.
It was great.
I knew at that moment that it didn’t matter if you weren’t technically the best. I also knew that I would be going back to ballet class next week. And those catty dancer girls? Bitches better watch their buns.
The Battle of the Bands was off the HOOK this year! We need more rap, though. I want to start a petition to have at least 45 percent of the acts be rap.
— JONATHAN G., JUNIOR
MIDNIGHT DAWN WAS ROBBED.
— ANONYMOUS, SOPHOMORE
Where can I pick up an album by the Raw Meat Demons? Also, David Chen and Oliver DeSoto are SO CUTE!
— VANESSA M., FRESHMAN
Where can I get the phone numbers of those pole-dancing chicks?
— STEPHEN N., SENIOR
All of America needs to get over their stupid perceptions of what high school is like. Based on television shows and movies, you’d think American teens led THE MOST DRAMATIC LIVES EVER! Do people not remember what their own high school experiences were like?
Let me tell you about high school:
Kids don’t fall in real love. Nope. They don’t. No one stares longingly into someone’s eyes and says things like, “Stacey, you are the most amazing woman I have ever met, and I am so lucky to have you in my life.” You know where you actually hear things like that? At weddings of thirty-five-year-olds. Not in the hallway at Bay High School.
We do boring things. Not fun, exciting things. Boring, boring, boring. We hang out in malls trying to trip each other and laugh. We spend hours at Quiznos avoiding going home. We spend beautiful Saturday afternoons watching television shows about other people doing stuff. You know why? BECAUSE WE ARE KIDS. It’s kind of hard for us to do fun things because we don’t have any money or street savvy.
Nothing is epic. No emotional indie ballad plays during some pivotal climax scene while we run in slow motion through hospital doors or across a football field. Kids don’t stand stoically against an eerie backdrop of blue-and-red police lights as they watch their hot girlfriend OD on the street.
So why is it that we high school kids insist on being disappointed by our own lives when they don’t have enough drama? Why do we hold ourselves up to these ridiculous expectations? And why oh why does this expectation always seem to be at a fever pitch when the end of the school year rolls around? Guess what? The end of this school year? IT WILL BE LIKE THE REST. Summer happens. Then we come back. The End.
Predictably,
Why is it that everyone expects something epic to happen at the end of the school year?”
David shrugged. “Because we’re dumb, man. Hollywood creates these false realities and stupid teenagers aspire to them.”
“‘Man’? Are you going for a new stoner vibe now?” I shoved David as we walked up to my house.
“I can’t help it if my speech is always ten steps ahead in coolness of yours, Hiz,” he said with a condescending shake of his head. I opened my front door and was about to respond with something truly brilliant but was stopped in my tracks.
“Dad? What are you doing home?” He was standing in the middle of the living room with his driver in hand, practicing his golf swing.
“Oh, just came home early,” he replied between swings. “Hi, David.” David waved and said with Asian Child Politeness (ACP), “Hello, Mr. Kim.”
“Why?” I demanded.
My dad ignored me and said, “David, studying hard this year?” His eyes didn’t move from his grip.
“Yup, as usual!” David said in the cheerful voice he reserved for my parents.
“Good, good,” my dad replied. And continued practicing his swing.
I stared at him. Why wasn’t he answering my question? Also, I knew that when my dad practiced his golf swing like this, it only meant bad things. The last time was when our pet gerbil went “missing” and my dad avoided telling us Crackers had been dead for days. There was something he wasn’t telling me, I just knew it.
I waved David toward the backyard. (I wasn’t allowed to have David in my room, believe it or not. They’ve known him forever but a boy is a boy is a boy to my parents.) After dropping our backpacks in the dining room, we stepped outside and sprawled out on a couple of lawn chairs.
“Well, that’s weird,” I muttered.
“What, your dad?”
“Yeah. He’s never left work early or even taken a sick day in the twenty years he’s worked for the air base.” My dad was an engineer for the Miramar air base — you know, where Top Gun took place. I love that a Tom Cruise movie is San Diego’s claim to fame. That and a killer whale named Shamu.
“Maybe everyone went home early today,” David suggested with a shrug.
“Maybe. Anyway, I, for one, am not looking forward to the end of this year, believe it or not.”
“Why?!” David comically whipped off his sunglasses and widened his eyes. I reached my left leg over to kick his chair.
“Because. I have to go to SAT school this summer.”
David shuddered and made a face. “Seriously, that will ruin your entire summer vacation.”
“I know! Since my first day of high school, my mom’s life has revolved around me conquering the SAT. You would think my entire future existence hinged on this one stupid, completely biased test.”
David yawned and stretched out like a cat in the sun. “Yer preachin’ to the choir, my friend.” I stared out into the yard and felt like I was staring into the abyss that was my boring future. A pair of fingers snapped two centimeters away from my face, shaking me out of my self-pitying reverie. “Yo, Hiz-house, did you hear me?” I swatted his hand away.
“NO. Geez.”
“I was saying, maybe with this craptacious summer ahead of you, we should do something epic. You know, live up to the hype in the movies.”
“Like what?” I asked with (completely justified) skepticism.
“Liiiiike … skipping up to LA to see Hot Chip play at the Hollywood Bowl!” He was literally jumping up and down in his chair. Hm. Hot Chip was my favorite band of the moment. But LA?
“Even if I wanted to, no way in hell would my parents let me go to LA to see a show.”
David rolled his eyes. “So lie to them.”
“UM, easier said than done! Do you not know Mrs. Kim? She who can detect a lie within a ten-mile radius?”
“Pfft. I think we should do it. And not just go up to see the show, but stay there for the night. The show’s on a
Saturday so we can drive up early, and hang until Sunday! We can stay at my cousin Lawrence’s apartment near UCLA. I’ve been wanting to plan something like this forever!”
Needless to say, the prospect of hanging out with chemical-engineering-major cousin Lawrence did NOT excite me. “Okay, D, what?! Why do we have to stay there? Hello, going up to LA with you guys is already pushing the Mrs.-Kim-death-wish-o-meter! A weekend trip? I might as well —”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” David rudely interrupted. “You make excuses for everything. How long is your mom going to rule your life?”
“FOREVER! Do you not know me and my Korean girl curse? The curse is forever.”
“Break that curse.”
I almost started laughing until I saw that David was dead serious. “Holly, let’s just have fun already. We can all hang out there for the weekend, away from this armpit of a town.”
Geez. It’s not like we lived in the middle of Kansas. And um, LA is like two hours away. You’d think we were traveling to Paris for a spontaneous getaway, the way David was getting excited. He was already pulling out his phone and texting someone. “You’re so boring. I’m telling Carrie to come over, she will totally be down for this!”
“Boring” stung. It wasn’t the first time I’d been called that. Sometimes it was hard being best friends with an Extreme Sportsman (David), a Hippie Outdoorswoman (Carrie), and a Professional Everything (Liz). I was the token Stick in the Mud. “I’m not boring! I mean, how am I supposed to pull this off? This isn’t like, some rebellious episode of iCarly. I’ll get caught quicker than you can say ‘Omo.’”
“I’ll figure it out. Leave it to me, Hizzle.”
I snorted. “Yeah, okay.”
David just shook his head. “Oh ye of little faith. Who do you think I am?”
“Count me out,” I said stubbornly, crossing my arms.
* * *
“So is David staying for dinner?”
I was reaching over my mom’s shoulder to grab a cucumber slice she’d just chopped. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Aren’t you getting a little old to be playing with David all the time?”
I almost choked.
“Play! What are you talking about? David’s been my friend for four years. Do you have a problem with him all of a sudden?” My voice was lowered because David was in the dining room helping Ann with some math homework. My mom wouldn’t make eye contact with me, and kept chopping the vegetables for the salad she was preparing.
“I don’t have a problem. But you are getting older now, and David’s a boy. What will other people think when you are with a boy all the time? Just alone, you two?” What was my mom saying?
“What is wrong with you? Why are you being so Korean and stupid?!”
Even before the words came out of my mouth I knew I had reached the point of no return.
My mother shoved the chopping block of vegetables into the sink with a huge clatter, and whipped around so that her face was inches away from mine. “You are a bad daughter!” she said in a dangerously low voice. I flinched. “I’m your mother and you need to treat me with respect! I’m not some trash on the street! So, say that again! SAY IT AGAIN!”
Tears pricked my eyes. “No!” I yelled back.
She stared at me with murderous rage for another few seconds before she turned on her heel and left the kitchen hollering, “Ungrateful brat!”
I was standing in the kitchen crying, pressing my shirtsleeve into my eyes when David walked in awkwardly. “Hey, are you okay? What happened?”
I wiped my face quickly, embarrassed. “Nothing. I mean, nothing new. I just don’t get her sometimes! I think … I think I hate her.”
“Aw, c’mon. You guys will make up,” he said, shoving his hands into his pockets.
Ann walked in with wide eyes. “What HAPPENED? Mom is soooo mad!”
“None of your business!” I snapped. “Get out of my face!” Ann’s eyes welled up with tears and she ran out of the kitchen, pushing past my dad.
“Holly! Why are you yelling at everyone? What’s wrong with you?”
I wanted to die. I hated that David was witnessing this. He seemed to read my mind because he threw me a sympathetic look and backed out, saying, “I should probably go. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, Mr. Kim.”
My dad shook his head sadly. “Holly, you shouldn’t fight with your mother so much.”
“I didn’t do anything! She’s the one trying to control my life all the time!” I said between heaving sobs.
“Your mom is only trying to raise you right. You have to understand that it’s all for your benefit.”
“She needs to learn to mind her own business. I’m not some robot child who will let her control my life!”
“You’ll have to learn to get along.” My dad sighed. “Because now there’s a chance I’ll be laid off from my job, and we’ll have to really support each other.”
I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. “Laid off?” It was one of those grown-up phrases that terrified me. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I work for the government. They don’t have enough money to keep the air base open.”
“What?! B-but, we’re America! We love wars!” I cried.
My dad shook his head. “Holly, stop being funny.”
“So, does this mean that our family’s going to go broke?” Whenever you heard of parents getting laid off, families were always moving to different homes. Or different cities, even.
“Nah. Your mom still has a good job. I’ll find something.” Although my dad was acting like everything was going to be fine, I felt a huge sense of dread … on top of the stress I already felt from my fight with Mom.
Worst day ever.
Someone whistled loudly in the journalism room and all conversations came to a halt.
“Hey, we have announcements for next year’s staff change!” Isabel yelled. We all gathered around in a hurry. “All right. After weeks of deliberation, both Mr. Williams and I have figured out next year’s staff.” Everyone murmured excitedly — these announcements were always highly anticipated at the end of the year.
“Okay, so first: I’ll still be editor-in-chief next year.” Everyone clapped halfheartedly. Because Isabel is a junior that was no huge surprise. “And because Amir will be graduating this year” — everyone made the obligatory aw noises — “our senior editor position is open, and the lucky journalist taking his spot will be … Holly!”
My mouth dropped open. A few people gasped, and heads whipped to look at me. Eep.
“We’ll find a new copy editor next year to fill her spot. Um, how about a hand for Holly?”
Everyone clapped dutifully, but I saw a few skeptical looks being exchanged. Dude, I was with them. How the heck did I get chosen to be senior editor? That was just like, one step below editor-in-chief!
“Do I still get to write my column?” I asked feebly.
Isabel nodded. “Yeah, don’t worry! Your column is what got you this position in the first place! We think you’re definitely capable of more responsible waters.” Oh boy, more responsibility.
Isabel made the rest of the announcements and I left the period not knowing how to feel. Could I actually get into this journalism thing? Would I even be able to handle it?
Liz came up to my locker as I was digging out my biology book. She looked dazed. “Oh my God. Holly, do you realize we’re both taking four AP classes next year?”
“What?! But we don’t figure out our schedules until orientation,” I sputtered. Orientation was usually at the very end of summer, when we took our ID pictures and picked out our classes.
Twirling a long strand of hair around her finger, she said, “Think about it. You know that we’ll take AP English and history for sure. And then I’m pretty sure you’ll be in chem and Spanish, too.”
I let that sink in. It was true. Despite being an utter tool in science, I’d been tutored diligently over the years by Liz and David and had managed to stay on the honor t
rack all the way to AP, holding on for dear life by a thread. And although it would probably kill me, I still had to sign up for advanced placement so that I had a chance in hell of getting into a reputable college of some sort. Kids were freaks of nature these days. Good grades weren’t good enough anymore. You had to be a freaking saint and do underwater gymnastics AND take every AP exam in the country. And that’s just for trade schools.
Liz caught my facial expression. “Well, don’t be all stressed about it! I’m just saying, wow. Junior year is finally upon us. The defining year.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I muttered. The bell rang and Liz and I bumped fists before heading off in different directions. As visions of AP exams and the SAT and general misery ran through my head, I bumped into Matthew.
“Holly, Holly, Holly.” FLASH. Charm explosion. Man, how did he do it? So irritating.
“Um … Matthew, Matthew …” I trailed off half-heartedly.
“Where you headed?”
“The Tall Building.” Yep, we get real creative over here at BHS.
“Hey, me too. Let’s go!” And with that little command, I was at Matthew’s heels trying to keep up with his gigantic jock-boy strides. He glanced over at me, and then did this thing that made my treacherous, stupid, weak heart flip: So casually, so naturally, he reached out and gently lifted the giant biology book I was clumsily carrying in the crook of my arm.
“Damn, girl, this is heavy.” Ah, music to my ears. My face flushed, and I shook my hair forward so he wouldn’t see my embarrassing Victorian reaction.
“Yep. Bio. Lots of … sciencey knowledge.”
He burst out laughing and I beamed. “Oh hey! Did you hear about Sean Woods’ party in LA next week?”
Asking me that question was like asking me if I heard about Lindsay Lohan’s next dentist appointment. Why in God’s name would I know that? “Nope,” I said nonchalantly.
“You should come. His dad’s house up there is off the hook. Right on the beach in Malibu.” Sean Woods was the lead singer of Midnight Dawn, the one with the record producer dad. I did not doubt his house was “off the hook.”